Death On the Dlist (2010) (9 page)

SO, BOTTOM LINE, DO YOU THINK IT’S THE SAME SHOOTER?” O’BRIEN
looked at Lieutenant Kolker over the width of the diner’s table top, two cups of coffee steaming, black, between them. It had been a long night and this morning they saw the photos to prove it, in color, on the front of the
Post
. It was Prentiss Love, all right. Shot dead, and on his beat to top it all off. He worked the crime scene into the night.

Kolker’s lack of response gave O’Brien the impression he was undecided, so he went on, more emphatically. “I mean, come on, first there’s Leather Stockton, now there’s Prentiss Love. Stockton’s a star, kind of, a D-Lister, anyways. Love is sort of a star. Hey, they’re both D-List celebrities! I hadn’t thought of that one!”

O’Brien took a sip of the black brew, winced a little, and kept going. “I know we don’t have all the evidence from the other jurisdiction, the Hamptons, but look. Stockton’s a woman, Love’s a woman. Both shot, one bullet to the head. Both with a handgun, don’t know the caliber yet. Both within short range, well, fairly short range. Love was within twelve inches, based on the amount of gunshot residue, and a little stippling on the left cheek. Stockton within three feet. Not exactly the same, but still, Kolker, they’re both close range. Both boozers, both just out of bad relationships. Too many similarities not to be the same killer. And both within a month. What, are you blind?”

“Sounds like you’ve been reading
Snoop
. Don’t know how those S.O.B.s got the scoop. Suffolk County PD better be looking at the reporter and the photographer as material witnesses, if not suspects. How the hell did
Snoop
get to the scene before the cops?”

“Yeah. I was wondering that, too.”

“But to answer your question, no, I’m not blind, O’Brien, I just want to be cautious and not stir anybody up into thinking we’ve got a serial killer stalking the city’s celebs, even if they are D-List. We don’t need that.”

“Have you heard anything about forensics yet?”

“Too soon on the bullet.”

“What about Stockton? There’s been plenty of time on that one.”

“It’s Suffolk County. They gotta get their heads outta their butts first and figure out how to get the bullet to the crime lab without breaking the chain of evidence! Of course they haven’t gotten the caliber yet. Or at least they haven’t shared it with us! Last thing they want is NYPD trying to big-foot the only murder case they’ve had in five years.”

“What about cell records and computer? Anything?”

“I told you, it’s their baby. They’re not sharing. But the only text Love got that we haven’t been able to ID overnight is somebody named Jonathon. But from the body of the texts, it sounds like it’s some kid she befriended, maybe in high school. He wants another signed photo, talks to her about
Celebrity Closets,
talks about his classes, you know, stuff like that. Harmless. So, long story short, nothing in the texts so far.”

“Is he a stalker? High school kids are weird these days. Look at Columbine for Pete’s sake.”

“Nope. Nothing like that. They seem to have been texting for over a year. Must have given him her cell at one of those book signings or a red carpet or something.”

“Yeah, that’s weird a fan would have her private cell number.”

“A computer geek could find it online.”

“Yeah. I know. That makes him a stalker in my book. But bottom line, are they connected?”

“Nah. Doubt it. Just coincidence. Kid probably writes a lot of stars.”

The waitress came by. “How much do I owe you, ma’am?”

“For you, Kolker, it’s on the house. Come back when you can stay longer. We’ll have your favorite lemon meringue pie this afternoon.”

The notoriety he got from the Hailey Dean case had made him a little bit of a celebrity. Whenever she was asked about the cops arresting her for the murders of two of her patients, she never once blasted him. It had been his big case, and he’d been so damn pig-headed. He was convinced she’d gone over the edge and started rubbing out her clients . . . although even the police shrinks had a hard time giving him a motive. It had to have been her.

But it wasn’t. That perv defense lawyer had been behind it all. To hear Hailey tell it, NYPD was just doing their job. She could have torpedoed him, ruined him . . . if she wanted to. But she didn’t.

He’d never had the guts to go and formally apologize, just sent flowers and peace offerings. And she always sent those back, always in the same box he’d sent them in. He didn’t really know what to say to her, alone, one-on-one.

“Thanks, Sheila. Save me a piece.”

The two cops got up, grabbed their jackets from the coat tree in the corner by the door and headed out. In twelve hours, they’d be back on duty.

SO WHAT DID YOU DO FOR THE HOLIDAYS?”

Fallon Malone’s BlackBerry emitted a sound like a tiny tinkling bell being played in the distance. Another text message.

Malone looked down from one of the two TV screens directly in front of her elliptical machine. She was right in the middle of a Lifetime movie and didn’t want to be bothered. But maybe it was her agent . . . finally.

It had been years since she got a script worth reading and now, due to her dwindling bank account and penchant for beautiful clothes, cars, and jewelry, she had to work.

She’d even consider TV. She’d be great on a prime-time soap. What did the
Desperate Housewives
have that she didn’t? Ridiculous. They should be kissing her feet.

Even though she was in her mid-fifties, in her heart she knew she didn’t look a day over forty-one. She’d managed to scam the tabs about her true date of birth with a fake birth certificate, and lived in mortal fear that somehow, they’d dig up the truth.

Maybe some sort of a reality series, focusing on her finding just the right Hollywood script, the right vehicle to showcase her talents.

Ever since the role where she soaped down a red Vette on camera without the benefit of underwear, most of Hollywood believed her “talents” lay beneath her belly button and above her knees.

The business was cruel. She had been stereotyped in the worst way. It was clearly a case of misogyny. They all hated her because she was beautiful.
A beautiful woman has a hard time making it in the business world,
Malone reminded herself as she reached for the BlackBerry.

Oh, hell. It was that kid again. Jonathon. How in the hell had he gotten her number to start with? It had all begun when he said he was collecting stars’ autographs to fund some sort of Boy Scout charity. Or something like that. Maybe an illness was involved? Or a school project? Or the school band? He went on and on about the band.

Whatever
. Now the kid texted her fifty times a day, it seemed. She usually didn’t write back. And wouldn’t you know that if she ever wrote him a nasty note cutting him off, it would end up in the tabs that she was an evil shrew. More of what she didn’t need.

She wrote back brightly,
“Nothing much! Just enjoyed the holiday! Tried not to eat too much turkey!”
She’d long ago learned not to ask him any questions like,
“How’s school?” “How’s your family?”
Or even
“How are you today?”

Even the most general and innocuous questions resulted in reams and reams of text messages back that totally clogged her BlackBerry. She dropped it into the elliptical’s magazine holder and got back to her movie. It was all about a marriage that went bad and the husband turns out to be a stalker. Again.

She must have seen this one, or one just like it, before. But now she was invested in the characters and wanted to see the end. Damn Lifetime. That network sucked up every daylight hour.

Bling-ding-ding. The BlackBerry tinkled again.

“I thought you were a vegetarian!”

Damn!
Busted by a fifteen-year-old boy sitting at home in his room. What? Had he read every single article ever in existence about her? You could dig up twenty-year-old articles on the Internet, and apparently this kid made her his own personal research project.

She’d told the press for years about all her healthy eating habits, how she did yoga for hours, went “clean” vegetarian, and only ate organic vegetables. No dairy, no gluten, no meat, no chicken, no fish . . . You had to live like a food monk to be “in” in this business. She had to hide if she even ate a French fry. If they ever got wind she ate cheeseburgers whenever she wanted, she’d be a laughingstock.

“Oh, just joking! Ha, ha! It was Tofurkey! A tofu substitute!”

Gritting her teeth, she punched in the letters and hit “send.” This was ridiculous. Could she block his never-ending text messages? But if she didn’t keep writing this kid back, the press could make hay over her breaking the heart of an Eagle Scout in Slidell, Louisiana, or wherever . . .

No sense risking that. Sweat was rolling down her back. Why did this actress get a lead role on a Lifetime movie? She was horrible.

She, Fallon Malone, would have been so much better. Were these people that blind? Couldn’t they see what a box office draw she still was? She’d even be willing to wash another car without a stitch on underneath . . . or a van . . . even an eighteen-wheeler . . . anything . . .

Turning the volume up on Lifetime, she waited for the next BlackBerry jingle.

THIS WOULD DRIVE HIS MOTHER CRAZY. THE FACT THAT HE, FRANCIS
Merle McGinnis, was texting back and forth with Fallon Malone. And Malone wasn’t the only one. He texted, e-mailed, hand-wrote letters to them all. And they wrote back. Why?

Because they were into him.

He made it a ritual to devote time to each one of the women every day; he recorded every TV appearance he could find, even going so far as having a satellite dish installed to get hundreds more channels than local cable offered. Now Francis had access to thousands of channels on which to find them. Even the repeats. Of course, live TV was the best because then he could get fresh signals, messages especially to him from the ladies via the airwaves.

It was their secret. The casual viewer would never catch on. A tilt of the head, a wink of the eye, pushing hair back from the face or behind the ear, touching a necklace or earring—each move had significance. He loved communicating with them like this, and told them so in all the letters he sent. It was in the letters that he prearranged what each signal would mean. There were different love signals from each lady.

They were into it.

He had loved watching
Celebrity Closets
over and over. Prentiss was always gorgeous, but over the last few months, he had gotten really concerned she was dressing a little slutty. She was totally coming across as a tramp. Not that he’d ever tell his mother he agreed with her even in the slightest.

He’d written to Prentiss several times about her image problem, nice, long letters. He had tried to stop her from looking so cheap, flaunting herself. She was ruining her image, plus other men could mistake the look for a come-on.

After all, Prentiss was already taken. They’d had an intimate relationship for years, since long before
Celebrity Closets
hit the airwaves. He stuck with her through thick and thin. And what did she do? Wear low-cut blouses, tube tops, mini-skirts, you name it. Plus, she flirted outrageously with the male celebrities and Francis was convinced she did a better job on their closets than she did for female celebrities. It was subtle, maybe the shelf liner was more upscale, more shoe space . . . Francis noticed details like these. Subtle . . . but important details.

She even flirted with some of the workmen on the show, construction guys responsible for tearing down walls and building shelves. But that was all for ratings, it didn’t mean anything at all . . . and Francis had been very understanding and patient . . . up to a point. Then, he had to endure the trumped-up claim she’d had an affair with one of the young and talented celebrities whose closet she “designed,” but Francis stayed strong and sure enough, it all blew over.

It obviously wasn’t true. She’d never cheated, he was sure. At least, pretty sure.

But Prentiss wouldn’t respond to his letters. She just wouldn’t listen. She’d put her career before his wishes. She didn’t understand his motivation. She refused to see it wasn’t that he was
jealous,
he was trying to help her. But she kept right on with the slutty look no matter how much he warned her. She simply wasn’t the woman he’d thought she was. She misrepresented. She basically lied to him throughout their whole relationship.

It finally got to be too much for him and he had to end it. He didn’t want to, but he had to. There was just so much a man could take. He hated to agree with his mother, may she rot in hell. She’d never thought Prentiss would amount to much.

But his mother had hated them all and thought they were all sluts. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Mother particularly hated Fallon Malone. She was absolutely livid over Fallon’s part in her last big screen role, where she’d washed the Corvette. Of course he had disagreed with his mother vehemently, arguing that that bit of film was classic movie magic and would one day be considered an all-time great, like
Gone With the Wind
or
The Godfather.

But since he’d had his mother buried far, far away on the other side of town next to the interstate, he’d taken the liberty of moving every single one of his girlfriend’s posters from the confines of his bedroom, rearranging and distributing them throughout the entire house.

And why not? They were art. Tasteful, yet provocative.

After putting them all on prominent display, as they all well deserved to be, he methodically removed and destroyed all his mother’s religious paraphernalia. The crucifixes, the saints, the ceramic figures of the Mother Mary, the giant oil painting of
The Last Supper
. . . It all went straight to the Dumpster.

Right along with his mother’s collection of ceramic dogs, her vast collection of miniature spoons from all over the world, and dozens of cream-colored, crocheted doilies carefully arranged all over every stick of furniture in the home. Armrests, foot-rests, headrests, seat cushions . . . all draped with doilies.

Oh, how he hated the doilies.

Then there was the Elvis collection. It wasn’t as irritating as the doilies, but there was so damn much of it. The pillows, the Elvis clock in the kitchen with the hips swinging back and forth on the second hand, the commemorative dishes on little stands covering every inch of the china cabinet. At least he could actually listen to some of the Elvis stuff. In fact, as he distinctly recalled, Prentiss Love was a big Elvis fan. Another thing they had in common.

Speaking of his mother’s junk, he couldn’t bear to think of all the cardboard boxes of Princess Diana stuff he’d lugged out to the corner of the street. He’d briefly considered a yard sale, but he couldn’t stand the thought of strangers picking through all the dishes while standing around in the front yard. And they invariably wanted to come in for something, the phone, the bathroom, a glass of water . . . He couldn’t stand the thought of those . . .
people.

In less than forty-eight hours after his mother was safely six feet under, he had totally redecorated the home. Now he could finally breathe without having a mournful-looking Christ on the Crucifix staring down at him over the back of his head at the dinner table. On the other wall was
The Last Supper
, with Judas Iscariot obviously the bad guy.

His cell phone blasted out the theme to James Bond. He adored his cell phone, although with all the special bells and whistles it had on it, it cost him nearly his whole disability check each month. It was worth it.

And he loved the James Bond theme song. Bond always got the women.

Francis looked down at the cell phone’s tiny screen. Fallon wrote back! He was getting closer and closer to her, and she didn’t even know it! She’d be so surprised. Francis focused on the text.
She was a vegetarian after all!
She’d just been joking about the turkey! He knew it!

What about that, Mom?